The Cutting Crew (8 page)

'But that doesn't mean I don't still want you.'

I looked at her. The hard ferocity in her face was totally at odds with what she'd just said. And she didn't still want me - how could she? If anything, she wanted things as they used to be - she wanted to be able to unwind the last four months, take them back and play everything differently. She wanted the me that had existed in the years up until that moment I'd told her I wasn't in love with her anymore. This me, she hated.

There are some things you do that you can't take back - like killing a man, or telling someone you don't love them anymore. A relationship is like a branch that's grown thick and strong over time. You can't have your partner snap that in half, and then just lay the two pieces next to each other and expect them to be whole again. However much glue you use, the original thing is always gone for ever.

She said, 'Will you do me a favour?'

'If I can.'

'It's not difficult.'

I didn't say anything.

'If you change your mind, you've got to let me know.'

I didn't say anything.

'Even if I'm married with kids. Well, no, maybe not if I have kids. But if I'm married, or with someone else, then you have to let me know.'

'Okay.'

'Because you're the love of my life. I want to make you happy.'

I closed my eyes again.

The worst thing was that I could imagine her planning this.

That's what you do when you're hurt and want to change something. I would have bet money that she'd lain awake and run this scenario through her head, thinking very carefully about what she needed to say to convince me. And in her mind it would have worked. She would have settled on a script of exactly the right words.

I could imagine this, because I'd done it myself for Lucy.

Rachel said, 'And I always want to be with you. And I always will want to.'

With Lucy, when the hurt got too much, I'd write her an email.

And I'd work on this fucking thing for hours. When I'd finished, it would say everything I wanted to say. It would, in fact, be as eloquent and convincing a piece of personal propaganda as had ever been committed to paper. But even as I was writing, I'd know that it wasn't really about persuading her to be with me. It was more about the fantasy of it: putting reality out of my head for an evening and imagining that things might be different. I'd let myself believe that she would read it, realise how deeply I loved her and want to be with me. Stupid, because if that was ever going to happen then it wouldn't matter what I wrote, but stupidity wasn't the point - it was always the solitary writing that was important: the act of imagination that twisted a few painful hours and made me feel less lonely. Then I'd press send mail and wish that I hadn't.

The letter was gone then, and I'd realise how imperfect it had been.

Days without a reply would follow, and I'd feel ashamed of myself and vow never to do it again.

'Okay,' I said to Rachel. 'I promise.'

I imagined her going home from the coffee shop and wondering which words she should have used instead - what the real magic ones had been. And then she'd come up with new ones, definitely magic this time, and want to see me again. She'd done this before.

And I still wrote emails to Lucy.

'I'm sorry.' Rachel's chair scraped, and I opened my eyes. 'I've got to go.'

'Rachel--'

'No. I don't want to see you again.'

And she was gone, starting to hide her face and then deciding why the fuck should she bother. I watched her go, forcing myself to feel blank. When the door to the cafe closed, I turned back to the table and slowly drank my coffee: it had been expensive, after all.

Not to mention so bastard time-consuming to come by.

I finished and left. The grey sky was beginning to darken: shadows deepening within shadows in clouds of damp pollution that you could taste at ground level. It was going to rain again soon. Maybe I had time to get to the university and start digging, but I thought: fuck it, I'd done enough for today, and it wasn't as if anybody gave a shit anyway.

I bought a bottle of vodka from an unfamiliar liquor store, and then stood in line for a late tram, getting slowly soaked by the first few stinging sheets of rain, but not really noticing or caring.

I left the brief file I was building on Alison on the table, and spent most of the evening on the computer, getting steadily drunk while I checked out a few removal agencies and storage companies.

Apparently, my stuff was driving Rachel insane, and so it would have to be put somewhere. But I couldn't actually think what else I owned back at the house - never mind whether I wanted it badly enough to care about what happened to it. The somewhere it was going to be put could be the rubbish tip for all I cared right now.

To be honest, the search was more just to give myself something to do while I was drinking. Just an excuse. An empty, pointless thing that would make the hours go by until I could go to sleep.

But when I'd searched as much as I could, I did something even more stupid than drinking - I got out the letters that Rachel had written me. I'd sent Lucy text messages and emails, but Rachel had never done that with me. It had always been face-to-face meetings and eloquent, handwritten letters that she'd give to me as she was leaving. I read through one of them now, finding the passage that my drunken mind had convinced me I wanted to read.

I don't think I know much, but I know that you always told me how much you loved me, and I always believed you. It made me feel happy and secure. I'm sorry if I did something wrong. If I did, I don't know what it was but I'd do anything to change it. I just can't believe that the love you had for me has gone. I think love changes because it has to. I don't feel the same about you as I did when we met, but my love for you has grown deeper as it's altered, and it's become something more wonderful. I think that if you look in your heart you'll realise that though a lot of that initial burst has disappeared you do still love me and you've given up everything in search of something else that's not really important. I understand and it's okay. But please come home.

Most of the vodka went, which is bad. But I didn't leave the flat and spend a vast amount of money in an overpriced club, and I didn't shoot at anyone, so I don't think it's fair to see the evening as a complete failure of character.

Chapter
Five

The next day, a vague sense of impending and possibly even present hangover kept me in bed until nearly midday. I hadn't been sure whether the storm was approaching or retreating; hopefully I'd been asleep for the worst of it and could have safely come out from beneath the covers, but I erred on the side of caution. By one o'clock I was fed, washed and watered. Two coffees down and I was ready to face the world. Whether I was ready to face the university was more open to question.

Horse is the university district. The main campus takes up most of the centre: a sprawl of departmental buildings and walkways mixed in with subsidised shops and cheap accommodation. It is constantly evolving as new structures are added, and so the architecture is diverse and odd, with glistening new blocks nestling in between archaic stone buildings, next to abandoned churches that had been converted into cafes and bars. Directly surrounding the campus, there is a pedestrian precinct of charity shops, cafes, takeaways, chemists and bars; and then this deteriorates slowly as you reach the outskirts of the district - except to the west, where you find the markets and ethnic stores that segue slowly into the classier commerce of Elephant. At the other three edges of Horse, the shops give way to small estates: thin streets filled with back-to backs and terraces; occasional patches of more middle-class semis.

That was where I lived: close to the district's eastern border with Wasp.

There is a real cultural mix in these streets, which I liked, but because the student-to-local ratio is split roughly fifty-fifty there can often be trouble. The locals tend to be quite poor - and of course the students are too, but they're also generally young, loud and prone to partying like fuckers. The adult delights of Wasp are, after all, only a brief tram ride away. So people who have lived in the area all their lives have seen house prices driven up and their streets scattered with litter and vomit, and have been woken up in the early hours of the morning by people pissing against their hedges. Factor in a few posh accents and a general lack of self awareness, and you can understand why the uneasy truce between the two populations was sometimes broken.

I took a deep breath and set off.

Ten minutes later, I could see Parkinson Tower and I knew I was getting close to the main campus. I was already beginning to feel the frustration build. At other times of year, students moved very slowly, but at least you knew where you were: you could trundle along on the same treadmill of lethargy, or else you could plot a course and dodge and weave along at the approximate pace of a normal human being. But this was exam time and so all bets were off. Some clusters of people were walking quickly, determined to arrive at their departments on time, while others were meandering, staring at bits of paper in last-ditch attempts to learn things; and yet more sections of the stream had clotted into groups that were smiling and hugging each other and generally unaware of anyone they might be in the way of. A few people were sitting on the edges of pavements, crying. Bars were full, and I found that I wanted to be in one.

Instead - as I reached the campus - I consulted a series of enormous but largely uninformative wall-mounted maps, relied a little on blind chance and eventually located the Fine Art department.

It was based in one of the newest buildings on campus: a bright, shining block of glass and brick that was almost intimidating in its cleanliness. The automatic doors seemed to pause for a second before deciding to let me in; and while that might have been my imagination, the frostiness at reception certainly wasn't.

'No,' she said.

'No?'

The three secretaries working behind a glass screen in the main office were bathed in poor light from a slatted window somewhere behind them. It was a strange atmosphere: everything looked slightly off-colour and the only real sound was that of fingers tapping on keyboards. Two of the secretaries were studiously ignoring me, working away. They were deferring to the third, who was young and pretty in an icy sort of way - or might have been, if her smile had gone anywhere near her eyes. When I'd rung the bell, her name had been Marie and how could she help? Presumably her name hadn't changed, but her attitude had certainly shifted a few miles.

'We can't give out information about students,' she told me.

I gave her my most charming smile. As my badge had already been produced and had failed to impress, the smile was all I had left, although I supposed there was still the gun.

'Could you at least tell me who her personal tutor was?'

'Not even that.'

'Not even that,' I said, leaning away from the counter and tapping it gently. 'Thank you. You've been very helpful.'

'And you're very welcome.'

To be fair, I hadn't expected any different, what with data protection laws being what they were. I could be a mad parent or a vengeful ex-lover or even - god forbid - not a cop at all. And there would be legal hell to pay if the secretary had said, 'Yes, she's in room six,' and then I went off and killed her. No - I'd expected that I would need a warrant to get information out of them, and I wasn't likely to get one. Fortunately, I knew from previous investigations that there were easier - if slightly less ethical options available to me.

A little over twenty minutes later, I was sitting in one of the university's computer rooms. Despite the fact that exams were underway, it was relatively busy, with rows of students typing, the noise undercut by the low, constant hum of the network. A few people were talking quietly, and there was an occasional sniff from someone waiting by the printer, but that was about it. I didn't like it in here: it was lit to clinical levels by artificial strip-bulbs in the mirrored ceiling, as though an operation was about to be performed. The air smelled of electricity, plastic and body odour.

I tapped a few keys quickly and logged in to the system.

The way computer accounts work at university is this: everybody gets one - staff and students - and because every single computer on campus is connected to a central server, you can log in on any of them and still have access to your own files - essays, spreadsheets, databases, internet bookmarks, emails - the works. Anything that Alison Sheldon had been working on - and anyone she had been writing to or receiving email from - should still be available. Ten minutes logged into her account would tell me more than Mariehow-can-I-help-you could in two hours.